When I was a boy, back when the dinosaurs roamed the Earth, Okanagan Lake was as clean as a bottle of Nestlé Water. Not now.

Back in the day, you could drink this stuff, and the gravel on the bottom was as clean as if it had chipped off the bedrock five minutes before.

In Settler Culture, it is very important to describe the social space that is the physical Earth as if it were a pristine space, untouched by human feet. Nature is the game. Every Canadian settler observer wants to be the first person to set foot there, but the thing is, the lake is dying. .

200 years ago, you had to wash in this stuff, and drink it. That intimate bodily contact determined your behaviour. Would you drink this?

Maybe not?

Please tell the truth.